Out of the Ether: A coda to Course: Oblivion
by jamelia116
Summary: Harry Kim and Seven of Nine, times two, sharing something of each other in the aftermath of the Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Course: Oblivion." Originally written 3/12/1999.
1. Distress Call

**Out of the Ether, ****A Coda to "Course: Oblivion"**

**by jamelia**

* * *

"What would Captain Janeway have done?"

Seven hesitated for a moment as Harry Kim's command resonated within her consciousness. She knew what their late captain would have done. No matter what the risk, if it were the only chance of succeeding open to them, she would have done it. In as firm a voice as she could manage, Seven declared: "Computer, prepare to eject the warp core. Authorization: Seven of Nine, omega phi nine three."

_::::Warp ejection systems enabled.:::: _

"Eject the core."

The concussion from the ejection shook engineering, where Seven was standing; shook the bridge where Harry Kim stood; indeed, shook what was left of the ship called _Voyager_ which the crew had called their home for a long time now- not that many were left of that crew. The violence of the vibration banished any expectation of success. Seven did not need to glance at the controls to know the situation. The battle had been lost. She shouted through the comm link to the bridge, hoping her message was getting through to their one remaining senior officer. "We've lost attitude control and shields. Hull integrity at 19%."

The acting captain was not yet ready to give up. _::::Reroute life support! Hell, reroute everything we've got left to the containment fields.:::: _

Seven punched in his commands, but any spark of hope she may have harbored that by doing so she could delay destiny was quickly extinguished. Her instruments told the tale. Further attempts to slap the controls on the console into compliance had no effect. "Hull breaches on decks nine, ten and eleven," she reluctantly announced to Harry. It was time to acknowledge the obvious. "Captain Kim, we must abandon this deck. All hands, vacate engineering!"

In seconds, the isolation door to the corridor was lumbering down, shutting off the vacant engine room from the rest of the ship. Of the handful of crew who still survived, virtually all stumbled downwards towards the nacelles rather than risk heading up, where more hull fissures were splitting the hull. There was no safe place to go anyway. All of them knew that. The only thing left to do was to find a place to prepare for the inevitable, alone or gathered together with the handful of shipmates that remained, as their lives as members of the crew of _Voyager_ came to an end.

One person, however, was willing to risk a trip upwards from Deck Eleven. She yanked open the cover to the most central of the Jefferies tubes that snaked through the ship and negotiated ladders that wavered underneath her feet. The handrails were also flexible, as if they were molded from latex rather than the alloys originally used in their construction. In the few minutes remaining before the process of disintegration was complete, Seven of Nine was going to ascend to Deck One, if possible, to assume her post on the bridge one last time.

* * *

_::::Hull breaches on decks nine, ten and eleven . . .::::_ There was a hiss through the comm system, then ominous silence. Harry called out desperately, "Seven. Seven!" There was no answer.

Grimly, the acting captain of _Voyager_ called out, "Computer, how long until we're within hailing range of that ship?"

As the computer struggled to answer, he that was made in the image of Harry Kim knew there was no way for the true _Voyager_ to reach them in time. He glanced around at each of the bridge stations, envisioning those who should have been manning each one.

No B'Elanna at the engineering station. She had been the first to die. Tom's spot at the navigational controls was also empty. Embittered by the loss of his wife and the knowledge that he was only an imitation of the "real" Tom Paris, the helmsman had not even tried to fight for his life when his body began to break down. The last words he'd ever uttered had been to Harry: "I'm glad it's over. Now B'Elanna and I can be together forever."

Neither Tuvok nor Alaya stood at tactical. The science stations were all vacant. Harry Kim stood where Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay always did. Neelix was no longer around to try to boost morale with a joke, even the self-deprecating kind he'd always told on himself.

Harry had wanted to have a command someday, but not this way.

The computer's struggle to answer the acting captain ended wordlessly, with several clicks and an eruption of static. Striding to his own station at Ops, Harry examined his instrumentation. There was nothing he could do. The computer core was gone - or its connection to the rest of the ship was. It hardly mattered which was the case; the end result was the same.

Rather than return to the captain's spot, Harry chose to move to the center console above the command chairs, the position on the bridge Seven of Nine habitually took from the time she'd first came aboard ship. He pictured her as last he had seen her: her beautiful face disintegrating as the stuff that had been sculpted into her being returned to its natural state, that of the wondrous silver compound that had once formed pools on a desolate world, ready to be introduced to sentience by visitors from far across the galaxy.

He wished he could see her again, one last time, drooping face or not. His own face looked pretty bad now.

To the rear of his position, Harry could hear a whistling whine issuing from out of the captain's ready room. The viewport must be giving way. Pinging and popping sounds began to surround him. He looked upwards as a defect in the shields was announced with a hiss. He became aware of a creaking sound issuing forth from the hatch of the Jeffries tube which emptied onto the bridge.

The creaking sound changed to that of a door opening. Rushing over, Harry grabbed the handle and pulled hard enough to rip it off its hinges. Offering his hand to the one emerging from the tube, Harry helped her stand. When he was face to face with her, however, he wondered if Seven's neural pathways still functioned well enough for her to know who he was. She stared at him without any sign of recognition. It didn't really matter to Harry. The very thought that she would even want make that terrible climb to be with him now was enough.

He put his arms around her and held her close, comforted by her presence. At least he wouldn't be standing here alone with only memories of his friends at the end. One friend would still be here with him. The dearest one, if he dared admit that to himself now.

* * *

When her eyes were able to focus again, Harry's face was there. His arms were around her, steadying her. She was pleased she had attained her goal, but there was one thing more she had to say to him before words became impossible.

"I sent a message through my Borg neural implant. If the other Seven is on that ship - and if my implant still operates adequately - perhaps it will reach her."

A ghostly smile graced his lips. "I knew you'd find a way to contact them."

"There is no guarantee of success."

"I don't need guarantees. The best we can do is try - and hope it will be enough."

Seven leaned into Harry's embrace, resting her melting cheek against the sagging skin of his, and sighed deeply. The ship's tortured shell was breaching all around them now. The shrieking of space as it displaced the air of _Voyager_ assaulted their ears.

It was strange, but at that moment a memory slipped into her awareness. Only a few short weeks ago, she had caught Lieutenant Torres' wedding bouquet. As the old superstition went, Seven would be the next to marry. Unfeasible now. With her last second of life fast approaching, she thought of Lieutenant Torres' question about who might constitute a suitable mate for Seven, just before they discovered the first evidence of the disaster that was now coming to a conclusion. "How about Harry Kim?"

Monogamy. She had sneered at the very thought when the chief engineer mentioned it. The idea of restricting herself to seeking sexual satisfaction from only one man had seemed absurd to her. Seven had not hesitated in telling this to the newlywed lieutenant who had promised to live a monogamous life with Lieutenant Paris. That had, indeed, turned out to be her destiny, for within days, Lieutenant Torres had perished while her husband looked on helplessly. She had experienced only one day of wedded bliss before her life had melted away.

Even that one day of monogamous life Lieutenant Torres had enjoyed seemed preferable to the fate Seven now faced. The man whose arms encircled her deserved a fate better than this one, too. He had always been a steadfast friend to her - a warm and loving friend. She'd rejected what he'd offered because she knew he would want monogamy.

She had been taught by the Borg that regrets were irrelevant. She no longer thought so. Seven bitterly regretted she had never explored the full sensations of shared bodies with Harry Kim when their lives could have been stimulated and enriched by the experience. Too late now. This body would never enjoy such intimacies, in a monogamous relationship, or otherwise.

Seven eyes met Harry's and read in them feelings that she had never had the chance to fully experience for herself. That no longer mattered. At least a small measure of sexual satisfaction might be achieved. She could still share a little of herself with Harry Kim. His breath was warm on her cheek as she moved close enough to touch his lips with hers. As he responded passionately, pulling her into the tightest of embraces, she closed her eyes and lived only in the moment for those brief seconds of awareness left to her. To them.

As their universe dissolved away, Harry Kim and Seven of Nine melted together in a first, last, and eternal kiss.

* * *

"Try hailing again."

"No response," Tuvok replied to Captain Janeway from his station on the bridge of Voyager.

Harry fiddled with the controls of his console, trying to clear away interference. Finally, he had enough information to say, "Captain, I've found the source of the distress call. It's coming from a vessel." Something was strange about that distress call, Harry realized, but he would need time to analyze it. Satisfying his curiosity wasn't a priority at the moment. They were within 400,000 kilometers of what was obviously a heavily damaged ship, and the nature of the distress call wasn't essential to their rescue mission. Afterwards, he'd have time to figure out what seemed off about it.

From her command chair, the captain crisply ordered, "Drop to impulse. Are the rescue teams ready? Bridge to Sickbay: stand by for casualties."

"In visual range." Tuvok worked his own console's controls, bringing the viewscreen to life. Harry looked up to see the vessel they were approaching.

"Onscreen." A galaxy of glittering frozen silver droplets hung jewel-like in the vastness of space, shining with the reflected light of the stars. Already, the drops were beginning to drift lazily apart as each one took its own trajectory into the void.

"Where's the ship?" Janeway murmured.

"No sign of it," Harry replied. A yawning chasm opened in the vicinity of his stomach. Those fragments once must have constituted a ship. If it had sent out a distress call, it was likely that living beings had been traveling in it. No more.

"That debris . . . that couldn't be all that's left," Chakotay said.

Tuvok's calm voice answered, "I'm detecting residual deuterium, anti-neutrons, traces of dichromates. If it was a vessel, it isn't anymore."

"Scan for life signs, escape pods." The captain ordered, not wishing to give up hope.

"None," Tuvok replied.

A short moment of silence passed before Captain Kathryn Janeway took the only course of action still available. "Make a note in the ship's record - we received a distress call at 0900 hours and arrived at the vessel's last known coordinates at 2120. The ship was destroyed. Cause unknown. No survivors." Turning to her silent helmsman, she added, "Mr. Paris, resume course."

"Aye, sir."

Harry sighed resignedly. _/And sometimes, the bear eats you,/_ he thought, as he glanced behind the captain, towards the station Seven manned when she was on the bridge instead of in Astrometrics. To his surprise, Seven was staring at the viewscreen, her usual cool, detached demeanor nowhere in evidence.

Rather, Seven looked like she'd seen a ghost.

* * *

He'd been restless all day, ever since he'd seen the fragments of the lost vessel - assuming that was what it had actually been. The sorts of materials usually used to build a deep space vessel were conspicuous by their absence from the debris. A paucity of organic compounds suggested that if beings anything like themselves had been on board, most of the crew must have abandoned ship long before the vessel reached the coordinates where the distress beacon was located. Harry devoutly hoped this was the explanation for the absence of escape pods in the vicinity.

He wasn't sure why he still felt so uneasy. It wasn't as if this were the first time such a thing had happened. They'd encountered the remnants of lost ships before, had heard distress signals beaming out their anxious pleas for help long after those who'd set off the signals had disappeared into interstellar dust. It was one of those things you had to accept when you ventured off into space - not that it made it any easier when it happened. The futility never failed to be unsettling, but something about this incident profoundly disturbed him, even more than usual.

Now, well past midnight, he continued to toss and turn, though he was exhausted from poring over the data from that strange transmission much of the afternoon. The oddest thing about the message was the way it seemed to be directed straight at them. The frequency used was a narrow carrier wave band, one that was reserved for Federation maydays. The distress call hadn't shown up on any other frequency. It was as if the mystery ship knew exactly how to contact them. How could they possibly know that this particular frequency was the right one? Chance? Or did they have some exotic kind of sensor technology that could "read" from tremendous distances which frequency was optimal?

With his thoughts tumbling around in his head as ceaselessly as his body tossed on the bed, Harry finally bowed to the inevitable. Sleep wouldn't be coming any time soon. Flopping around in bed when he knew he was going to stay wide awake was ridiculous.

Throwing off his blanket, Harry donned his robe and walked over to the replicator in his quarters. Harry stared at it for several minutes, indecisive about what he wanted. While he was a bit hungry, for some reason, replicated food didn't appeal to him at all tonight.

Replicated food wasn't his only option, though. Neelix usually left sandwiches and snacks in the mess hall for Beta and Gamma shift meals or for those who, like Harry, were in the mood for a midnight nosh. It was after 0100. It was too early for the night shift to be eating lunch, but somebody from Beta shift might still be in the mess hall having a late supper. Companionship definitely did appeal to him. Besides, on their last foraging mission, they'd picked up some very nice fruit. Neelix's sandwiches might or might not be made from replicated food, but the fruit, Harry knew, would be natural.

Just remembering their tart sweetness was enough to make Harry decide upon a course of action. He slipped on casual clothing and comfortable shoes, readying himself for a foraging mission of his own. Destination: Deck 2.

=/\=


	2. Comfort

As he entered the mess hall, Harry cast his eyes around the room to see if anyone who might be interested in some pleasant conversation was there. No one was in sight. Shrugging in disappointment, Harry proceeded to Neelix's kitchen to check out what was available. At least he could get that natural snack he was craving.

His best bet, as he'd suspected, was the fruit. The deep purple globes had overtones of cinnamon, along with a hint of tartness that made them very satisfying. At least some of the Delta Quadrant foods could hold their own against the Alpha Quadrant's tastiest selections, Harry found. Too bad Neelix had a habit of picking those that couldn't measure up when making his favorite recipes. The Talaxian was starting to get better at preparing foods that appealed to the entire crew, however. About half the time, Harry could find something he actually liked on the menu.

Grabbing a pair of purplefruit, Harry turned to leave the kitchen. Rather than sit alone in here, he'd enjoy them in his quarters. Since his recent struggle to get over losing Derran Tal, he'd already spent more solitary nights in here than was good for him.

As he turned toward the door, however, he could see he was not alone in the mess hall after all. Behind a post that had hidden her from his initial view, a blonde-haired figure sat, staring out at the stars sliding by the windows of _Voyager_ as the ship plowed its way home to the Alpha Quadrant.

"Seven?" Harry called out tentatively.

She turned her head towards him slowly, as if awakening from a trance. "Ensign Kim."

Harry approached her slowly. Her expression was an unusual one for her, almost reflective. It was a lot like the one he'd seen reflecting back at him from the mirror when he was dressing to come to the mess hall. "Don't you usually regenerate at this hour?"

"I regenerated at the end of my duty shift this evening. I had . . . questions concerning my neural link. I wished to know if it was operating within established parameters. The most efficient time to run diagnostics is during regeneration."

"That sounds reasonable. Was it?"

"Was it what?"

"Was your neural link operating within its established parameters?"

After an extended pause, during which Seven absently fingered a PADD she held in her hands, she finally replied, "Yes."

At Seven's almost imperceptible nod towards the chair next to her, Harry sat down at the table, studying his companion's face. Invitations from Seven to join her were still a rare occurrence, but not as rare as Seven's losing track of a simple conversation.

"You sure it's working all right? You seem a little distracted."

She hesitated again before saying, "It is working properly. But . . . I am . . . distracted."

"Can I help?" Harry asked. Belatedly, he offered her one of the purplefruit. "Want some?"

Waving away the fruit, Seven answered, "I received two garbled transmissions through my cranial implant today."

"Seven, are you saying that there are other Borg in this area?"

"No. There are not other Borg in the area . . ." From her uncharacteristic fidgeting, he could see how disquieted she was. "After examining the transmissions closely, I realized there had been a significant delay between the time the messages were sent and my reception of them. I thought my implant was at fault. It was not. After the diagnostic, I was able to confirm that the Borg who sent me the transmissions had precisely the same transmission frequency as myself."

"I didn't think that was possible."

"It is not. Each Borg has a unique frequency. There is no question of error. The messages came from my own cranial implant."

"Can you send a message to yourself like that?"

"It is possible, although unlikely. I would expect to be aware of any messages I sent to anyone in any case - especially myself. I detected a slight temporal displacement, however, which apparently interfered with reception. " Seven's voice broke slightly.

Now Harry was discomfited. "Temporal displacement? You're sure about that?"

"Yes. That is why I needed to be certain my implant was working at peak efficiency. Because of the temporal shift, I believed I may have sent myself a message from the future, in order to warn _Voyager_ of a disaster."

"You mean, like the message sent to you during the slipstream drive test?"

"Yes," she said in a hushed tone.

Both fell silent, remembering the strange messages sent during their slipstream drive experiment several months before. Because they'd followed the course corrections Seven had received from Harry, who was ahead of _Voyager_ on the _Delta Flyer_, the first trial of their new drive had been aborted. The strange part was that Harry had never had time to send any course corrections. Later, after reexamining the ones he'd been prepared to send, Harry saw a fatal flaw in his figures that could have sent the ship careening off course and out of control, quite possibly killing the entire crew. The incident still haunted Harry, since the phantom course corrections had carried a personal message, piggy-backed within the calculations, from an older, grimmer version of himself. This older Harry must have sent the course corrections to Seven.

"You owe me one," the future Harry had said.

Only three people on Voyager knew of this disturbing message: Seven, who had received it; the captain, who had delivered it to Harry; and Harry himself. He'd never mentioned it to anyone else. He seriously doubted that Seven or the captain ever had, either.

"Do you think it was a warning?"

"I do not believe so, Ensign Kim. Once I was able to fully decode the message, another explanation appears more likely." She handed Harry the PADD she was holding. "Here is the message."

Harry read the words with difficulty. The message wasn't particularly long, but the sentences were disjointed. The meaning came through, though, well enough for Harry to read it twice more before commenting. Raising his head to look up at her, a puzzled Harry said, "_Voyager_ is thousands of light years from the Demon Class planet, Seven. They couldn't possibly have gotten all the way out here. In fact, from the ion trail we found, that ship was coming from the opposite direction, on a heading that would take it in the direction of Demon, not away. It's hard to believe that that ship carried our clones."

Assuming the bemused air she often adopted around Harry, Seven said, "On what basis do you make that assumption, Harry Kim? The clones were our exact replicas, with the single exception that they were adapted to a Y-class planet environment. They shared our memories, our intelligence, our creativity. We are 'way out here.' If the slipstream drive experiment had succeeded, we also would have been much closer to the Alpha Quadrant than we are now. Can you be so certain they could not accomplish what we ourselves almost did?"

"Are you saying they might have perfected the slipstream drive when we couldn't?"

"No. If you recall, they were not exposed to the slipstream drive. That occurred after we left them on Demon."

"That's right! I'd forgotten that."

"Besides, I have analyzed the ion trail residue from the ship's course. It appears that the drive used was a variant of this ship's own warp drive, tuned to the utmost efficiency."

"I haven't had a chance to look at it, but I'll take your word for it."

"As you should." Although he would not have chosen this way to disrupt his companion's melancholy mood, Harry was pleased to see a hint of a smile touch her lips. It had been quite a while since they'd had a chance to interact in such a casual manner. Harry's spirits were buoyed by this appearance of Seven's unique sense of humor.

"I guess we've got another idea for a new technology to get us back home to the Alpha Quadrant, then."

A shadow flashed across her features again, and Harry mentally kicked himself. The Alpha Quadrant wasn't "home" to Seven of Nine. Hurriedly, he said the first thing that came into his head. "Seven, this all sounds very reasonable, but where could the clones get a ship? We only left them one Class 2 shuttle, and it wasn't exactly in good shape."

"The biomimetic substance replicated our comm badges and my Borg implants. A ship may not have been outside its capabilities. If you recall, the ship sank into the semiliquid surface of the planet."

"_Voyager_ is an unbelievably complicated bit of technology!"

"As are my Borg components. If nanoprobes and implants can be reproduced accurately, why not a ship?"

"An entire ship, perfectly duplicated? Capable of functioning even more efficiently than the original? Incredible!"

"Perhaps the ship was not perfectly duplicated. That may account for its destruction."

Sobered by her hypothesis, Harry exhaled slowly while he considered it. "You may be right, but I still have trouble believing _Voyager_ could have been duplicated so exactly that it could get out here. The ship didn't have to be a clone of _Voyager_. Maybe somebody else stopped on the planet after we left and picked up some of the clones. I could see that happening. Was there any collateral evidence to substantiate your theory?"

"There was," Seven declared. Taking the PADD from Harry's hand, Seven activated a new file. "You will see a table displaying the compounds found in the debris field, comparing them to the biomimetic gel on Demon as recorded in our sensor records."

Harry read down the file, shaking his head sadly when he came to the end. "And the volume of that debris field is what we would expect to find if a cloned object the size of Voyager - and its contents - were to be destroyed."

"Yes."

Harry looked over the file for several seconds more, but he could find nothing amiss. He wanted to find a flaw in her logic. He could not. "So this is why you seemed so shook up on the bridge today?"

Seven glared at him with a raised eyebrow. Harry steeled himself for a lecture that it was impossible for a Borg ever to be "shook up." The eyebrow descended rapidly, however, as she admitted, "I was disquieted before I reached the bridge. I had partially decoded the first message - enough to recognize the sender was identifying herself as one of the Demon clones. When Commander Tuvok recited the composition of the debris, it confirmed the possibility . . ."

Her thought hung unfinished in the air as she stopped speaking, her eyebrow raised now from the furrowing of her forehead rather than pique with Harry.

". . . the possibility that the sender of the message was one of the Demon clones," Harry finished for her. "Your clone."

"Yes, but that was not why I was . . . 'shook up.' I received the second message when I was on the bridge." Seven stood up and walked over to the windows then, facing the stars and searching deeply into space, as if she were seeking to find an answer to an unspoken question.

Harry glanced down at the PADD he was holding and searched the index for the second message. "Did you put the second one in the same file as the first, Seven? I only see one message here."

"The second message was . . . difficult . . . to describe." At the haunted quality of her voice, Harry looked back at her. Silhouetted against the window, her body backlit by the dim light of the stars in the partially lighted mess hall, Seven stood with her arms clasped around herself, as if she were holding herself together.

Laying the PADD down on the table, Harry stood and approached her. He didn't know quite what to say or do, but he wanted to help. Before he could speak, however, Seven turned to face him, her arms still crossed before her. "There were no words," she explained. "It was not so much a message as a set of images and sensations. I believe it was sent inadvertently. I suspect her neural implant was no longer functioning properly."

He looked into her eyes and saw pain. Without thinking, Harry put his hands on her arms to comfort her. Gently, he asked, "What kind of 'images and sensations,' Seven?"

She replied, in an even softer voice than he had used, "I could see flashes of what she saw. Everything seemed to be melting. The shields had failed. There were explosions. She . . ." Seven searched his face for a moment, as if looking for something she couldn't find. ". . . she saw you. The clone of you, to be precise. They were standing in front of each other, as we are now. I felt arms holding me. Holding her." She paused before saying, cautiously, "Perhaps it would be preferable to show rather than tell you."

He nodded and waited expectantly for a few seconds, but he was still surprised when Seven released her hold upon herself, slipping her arms around his torso instead. When she leaned in towards him, he stared at her in amazement. He was even more stunned when her lips touched his in a cautious, experimental kiss.

Stunned or not, Harry could not resist. His lips responded to hers as if by their own volition, returning the kiss she had initiated. Friendly when it began, the kiss quickly turned into something warmer, much closer to the kisses he'd shared with his Varro lover Derran Tal than one of the friendly pecks on the cheek "Uncle Harry" sometimes gave to Naomi Wildman.

Breathless, Harry broke off first, expecting to see anger in Seven's eyes. Instead, he saw even greater pain. He started to apologize when Seven murmured, ". . . and then there was nothing. Nothing. The message terminated . . ."

Harry closed his eyes. "They died? You felt it?"

She nodded her head ever so slightly. "I know how death feels. I perceived it when drones of the Collective ceased to function. But the Collective as a whole survived, sharing the experience with me. This time . . . "

Grasping the implications, Harry pulled Seven into his arms and hugged her tightly. She burrowed her face into his shoulder, making no attempt to pull away, as he whispered, "Seven! I'm sorry." Any thought Harry may have had that having her in his arms was a dream come true was suppressed by his knowledge of how deeply she had been affected by this totally unexpected blow. Seven, in that split second that the message ended so abruptly, must have felt as if she herself was dying.

So engaged in mutually comforting each other were they that neither heard the mess hall doors opening, nor the footfalls of the pair who entered. The first time either of them knew they had company was a female voice's sarcastically admiring, "Way to go, Harry!"

Harry whipped his head around to see the laughing faces of B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris. He started to jump back, but Seven clutched at him tightly, keeping in close contact. When he looked down at her, he saw her face was averted from Tom and B'Elanna. The light from the stars shining on her right cheek seemed to reflect more brightly than off her left. Surreptitiously, Harry raised his hand and rubbed a bit of moisture from Seven's cheek with his thumb. He did not allow his amazement that he was performing that particular act for this particular woman show on his face. Later, he could wonder over it. For now, he had to figure out how to minimize the damage - and the amount of betting that all the gossips on board would be doing when this got out.

Tom cleared his throat. "So, are the two of you demonstrating assimilation holds? Or did we interrupt another courtship rituals discussion?" Harry didn't have to look in Tom's direction to detect the smirk that would be lurking on his face.

"Tom!" said B'Elanna.

"Ouch, B'Elanna. You've got a really sharp elbow, you know that?"

Harry grinned at that, looking over at his friend. Tom was vigorously rubbing his side. Stepping back, Harry released Seven from his embrace, although his hand still rested on her forearm.

Seven faced the couple and stated coolly, "Individuals hold each in their arms for purposes other than single cell reproduction, although doubtless you find that difficult to believe."

"Nah, I know that, Seven. I prefer the single cell reproduction purpose, though. How about you?" Tom inquired, keeping a wary eye on the location of B'Elanna's elbow.

"I was demonstrating to Ensign Kim the manner in which I comforted Naomi Wildman when the rest of the crew was entranced by the space creature which attempted to consume _Voyager_. At the point you interrupted us, I was preparing to lift him bodily from the floor to carry him out of the mess hall." Seven turned to Harry, adding, "Shall we finish the demonstration another time, Ensign?"

"Another time, Seven." Harry agreed, smiling.

"Oh, please. They really _are_ in the middle of some sort of strange courtship ritual! Let's get our fruit, Tom. Leave the lovebirds in peace!" B'Elanna swung around, physically dragging a mildly protesting Tom towards the kitchen.

As the chief engineer and helmsman bantered their way into Neelix's domain, Harry examined his companion. Her eyes were dry, and her usual composure had returned. He could detect no sign of her recent distress on her face.

"Do the two of you want some fruit? It's really good. Seven?" Tom called out from the kitchen.

"No, Ensign Paris. Ensign Kim has already provided me with one."

The purplefruit he'd come to the mess hall for still sat, untasted, on the table next to the PADD. Seven walked to the table and retrieved both the fruit and the PADD. Handing one purplefruit to Harry, Seven cleared the PADD of the file on display and sat down in the chair she had been occupying when Harry first saw her. He took the seat next to hers. Tom and B'Elanna, carrying a tray laden with fruit, four glasses of water, and napkins, sat down across from them.

"Looks like the two of you really whipped up an appetite," Harry commented archly. "Wonder what you've been doing to get so hungry?"

Tom wiggled his eyebrows as he bit into his fruit. The lush flesh released a stream of juice that dribbled down his chin. "Umm," Tom mumbled as he chewed. "I think we're going to run out of napkins." Smiling suggestively at B'Elanna, he added, "If we run out, think we can find another way to clean up?"

B'Elanna rolled her eyes, but Harry didn't miss the affection in her gaze when it was leveled at Tom. Glancing over at Seven, who was staring intently at the fruit in her hand which she'd yet to take a bite from, Harry observed, "We should all have followed Seven's lead. In that purple outfit, no one can see any dribbles."

Seven raised her eyebrow and took a napkin. Hesitantly, she opened her mouth, finally taking a delicate nibble that oozed juice from the side of her lip despite the small scope of the bite. She quickly fastened her mouth on the same spot, stanching the drip from her lip with a finger while sucking the fruit to keep more juice from dribbling down her chin.

"Harry, close your mouth," ordered B'Elanna.

He laughed, realizing that he probably had been a little too interested in Seven's eating technique. He took a bite of his own purple confection. It was just as luscious and sweet as he had expected. Very satisfying.

The four of them slurped over their snacks, with the first verbal comment coming from Seven when she'd finished. "This is a most inefficient method of obtaining nutrients."

"Tastes really good, though, doesn't it?" Tom asked.

"It is acceptable."

"Uh, huh," said B'Elanna. "So, if I may be so bold, what _were_ the two of you doing in here when we came in?"

"Seven told you. We were discussing the ways people comfort each other."

"Uh, huh," said B'Elanna. "Fascinating. And how did the subject of 'comforting each other' come up, anyway?"

Tom's expression grew somber. "I don't think that's hard to figure out, B'Elanna, after today."

"No, I guess not," she agreed, her hand lightly brushing against Tom's. "You know what I thought when I heard Tuvok read off what was in that debris field? It was made of the same compounds as we found on the Y-class planet. You know? Deuterium, dichromates. The silver blood was made of those materials. It's odd that stuff was out here in space. I wonder how it got here?"

"Hard to say," Harry said neutrally. Carefully, he looked at Seven. She was calm, but her eloquent eyes met his. Through that silent regard, Seven conveyed that their conversation about messages from destroyed ships were to remain confidential - in particular, that last, inadvertent message. He bobbed his head slightly, just enough to let her know he understood. Even the captain would never learn of it, Harry vowed.

"You know, I haven't thought about the clones since we left Demon. I wonder what they're up to?" B'Elanna continued, oblivious to the sub vocal communication between Harry and Seven. When Harry stole a glimpse at Tom, however, he saw Tom's eyes flickering between Harry and Seven, a quizzical, thoughtful look on his friend's face, as if he were sizing up the situation. Harry held his breath.

Finally, Tom replied, "Oh, they're probably busy reproducing more clones. Duplicating themselves, maybe using the replicators . . . some of them might even be doing it the old- fashioned way with a little baby-making."

"There you go with the sex talk again, Tom," B'Elanna said, although from her tone, she was not at all displeased.

"Just stating the obvious, B'Elanna."

"Tom, do you really think they might be duplicating themselves the way they duplicated us?" Harry asked.

"Sure, why not? If they wanted to populate their world, it would be the fastest way."

"Making perfect copies from copies in generation after generation is improbable, Ensign Paris."

"True, Seven. They might do it for a couple of generations, though, to help protect against mutations while the population was still small."

"So you think there could be four or five Tom Parises on Demon right now?"

"Why not, B'Elanna? And at least four or five B'Elanna Torreses, too. One for each of the Toms." His voice deepened as he spoke, with eyes brimming with emotion as he looked upon his lover.

"I hope you are correct, Ensign Paris," Seven said softly. Harry heard the mournful undertone, but Tom and B'Elanna did not. Their eyes were busy sending each other communiques of a much different nature.

After a lengthy pause, Tom said, "Well, B'Elanna, I think it's time to leave our lovebirds alone so they can talk about comforting each other again. You had enough to eat?"

"For the moment. You're right; it's time for us to go."

Harry and Seven remained seated while the other couple whisked away the tray, littered with soaked napkins and pits from devoured purplefruit, to the recycler. B'Elanna said good-bye as they walked towards the door, but Tom pivoted around before exiting.

"Harry?"

"Yes, Tom?" Harry said resignedly, awaiting the humorous but barbed comment that was sure to issue forth from his friend's lips.

"Just promise me, Harry. No nervous breakdowns tonight. I've got plans."

Harry shook his head and laughed. After a quick wave goodbye, Tom threw his arm over B'Elanna's shoulders as they strolled out of the mess hall.

"Nervous breakdowns?" Seven asked.

"It's a long story. Another time." He smiled back at her. "Are you going to be okay now?"

"I believe so, Ensign Kim," she answered, after a short pause.

"Are you going back to your cargo bay to regenerate some more?"

"Not immediately. I would prefer to contemplate the day's experiences here . . . where I can see the stars."

Harry caught the hesitation. He shrugged off- handedly. "You know, I'm not all that tired. May I sit here a little longer with you? As long as you don't mind having company, of course."

"I do not mind."

Harry dimmed the lights, prompting another raised brow from Seven; but since he made no overt moves towards her nor comments as he settled back into his chair, neither did she. He was aware that she closely studied his profile for several moments before turning her attention back to her view of space. She was sitting in the same chair she'd occupied when he first came into the mess hall, but her posture now seemed less rigid, more relaxed. His own respiration might have been a little more rapid than usual, but otherwise, Harry tried to appear oblivious to her presence.

For a long while they sat there, staring out the window at the stars streaming silently past _Voyager_, as their ship continued its long journey to the Alpha Quadrant. At least on this night, neither of them would be sitting there alone.

=/\=


	3. The Ether

_Voyager_ had long since left the silver fragments far behind, with only two beings on the intact ship grasping the truth about the ship that no longer was.

The fragments tumbled through the soundless, endless night of space, gradually scattering as their separate trajectories carried them in different directions. The frozen silver chunks were of many different sizes. Some were quite large, composed of sections that had once constituted parts of the hull. The forceful breaching of its shell had tended to keep most of the pieces from the dead ship rather small, however. Most were tiny; some were microscopic in size.

One of the more sizable clumps had once formed the bodies of two humanoids standing on the bridge of the doomed vessel. At the moment the infinite cold of space surrounded them, they had been wound tightly together - in fact, at the moment of death they had been in the act of melting together. What once had been two separate entities was now one form, wedded together, with but one trajectory through space. Whatever fate might come to one of these formerly separate beings, the other would share.

Did these two, copied from others, ever possess souls? It was impossible for an observer to say. If they did, then those souls must already have flown into eternity when molecular cohesion failed to hold their vessel and their bodies together.

As for the sentience that had lived in the silver blood, prompting the creation of the beings from the templates that had been the crew of Voyager - in the smaller bits, it died. In other, larger pieces, it only slept. If a passing comet or meteor or space vessel chanced to pick up any of those larger fragments, the silver blood could be transported, perhaps to another place which awaited new life. Within the frozen chunks not yet completely broken down to its components when freezing occurred, some strands of DNA might still lurk.

Could new life - and, eventually, intelligence - be carried to another planet when the silver blood melted, releasing DNA fragments, and seeding a new world with the beginnings of life? The laws of probability made the chance minute, yet even a slight chance is better than none at all. Just as even a brief life may be better than none at all.

It was hard to say for sure.

In the here and now, however, the silver droplets floated majestically through the vast, empty, and dark silence of space.

Waiting.

The end.

* * *

Disclaimer: I borrowed a little of the dialogue from Paramount/Viacom's "Star Trek: Voyager" and characters belonging to the series in order to revisit the episode "Course: Oblivion." The concept is mine; all else belongs to Paramount. The story was originally written in March 1999.


End file.
